26 September 2009

Quote

By a user Sacha in Kiva team forum
Assume there is a god that created the universe. Then, god either:
1) created the universe and the laws thereof, and now stands back observing, but not interfering with, his creation (aka "deism")
2) created the universe and now actively manages his creation (aka "theism")

#1 is no different than a universe without god, at least as far as we are concerned, since the universe obeys rules that we can suss out. Supernatural events are simply natural events we don't understand, but which we have the power to understand, since they obey laws that we can understand.

#2 is the viewpoint that most religions take, however it can be shown (http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/god5.htm, previously featured in this forum IIRC) that god does not answer our prayers, and therefore, such a god is relegated to either managing his creation according to laws (reducing this god to the same god in #1) or to managing his creation in a random/arbitrary, not-adhering-to-any-laws, kind of way.

If we assume that god is random, then that leads to the conclusion that the universe is unintelligible. Since that is not what we see around us (that is, we appear to be able to make sense of and build consistent models of the universe around us), we can conclude that god is not random or arbitrary.

So, the best we can hope to do is attempt to understand the universe, and if we are to attempt that, then we have to assume that the universe is understandable. Any reference to god is unnecessary, since the universe acts according to laws we can discover and understand (or is basically random and unintelligible, which we reject). Allow me to rephrase that: Even if there is a god, even if he created the earth and all the plants and animals thereon, evolution is _still_ the current state-of-the-art in understanding the origin of species.

The ultimate conclusion is: learning about creationism in the context of biology makes no sense.

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